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Has BW got it wrong?
ZERMINUS
Member Posts: 241
It seems that there are now questions being asked about the fitness of the game in one particular area - the developers own take of the game. Specifically, after five years of complex construction, have they become so close to TOR that they themselves can no longer distinguish between what is good and what is not?
I personally have been a little unhappy about the way some developers, like Daniel Erickson for example, have been contemptuously dismissive of players' wants and reactions, insisting that their own take on the game is unquestionably right. And yet, little things like this are now coming to light:
"At Penny-Arcade Expo 2010 in Seattle, I went with a SW:KOTOR guild to a panel dedicated to showing some of the game off. Not being a SW MMO guy myself, I was just their with my friends. We waited, they had a glitch with the game right there in front of us, so some dudes kept talking while they tried to fix and reset the game.
"They had some pre-selected people from the audience come play a situation in the game. They touted the situation as probably one of the hardest in the game and that the 4 selected gamers were going to get routed by the computer. They had employees ( I think a producer or two and a gorgeous community manager play the situation first, and they had a hard time with it, but beat it ), the 4 selected players then played it… and easily beat it. It was funny to watch. The 2 guys leading the panel looked at each other and jokingly played it off, “… wow… well I guess it wasn’t as hard as we thought.” and their faces were priceless.
"They didn’t know what to do/say, it was if they were showing off what they thought to be a Ferrari and someone opened the hood up and said, “Dude, you got a f***ing ford taurus here bro!”
"They played it off well though and since everyone in the room was there just for SWTOR, they all more than likely stayed in their trance. But not being a fan, I saw on their faces how surprised they were (not to mention embarassed by the 20 minute wait period because of a bug)."
https://ealouse.wordpress.com/2010/10/12/hello-world/
So, is this just one mildly embarrassing bug that might happen to any game developer presenting their new product to an audience - or is this little episode symptomatic of much larger problems within the game do you think?'
Comments
Mildly embaressing bug.
In Bioware we trust!
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
What exactly does the bug have to do with the difficulty of the particular mission they played? I get that the glitch happened while they were trying to load up the game but you spent about half of the post trying to tell us how stupid they looked by declaring the game play segment as difficult when it turned out not to be.
And why is it no matter what the game the only people who find fault with the way the devs speak to the players (who are not getting what they expect from the game) are the critics, those of us who don't develop games (or think we can do a better job than the devs) kindly take in any info we can get and continue to deal with things outside of that particular game as opposed to getting hung up on imaginary insults.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
Exactly. They can always ramp up the difficulty if they wish. This is part of what betas are for.
In Bioware we trust!
It's not the bug that's important - that can happen to any one.
It's the fact that they thought their highest level raid boss (or close) was so tough and ingenious that it would be very hard to beat - and yet four randoms from the game floor were able to beat it without any trouble.
That raises questions about combat, about boss design, about their analysis of players, about raid/dungeon climaxes etc etc Most importantly, it begs the question - have these designers who, in the past, have mostly designed SRPG games made a mistake in designing MMORPG combat for this game?
Come on, everyone knows that you can't adjust coding to make something in game more or less difficult. Once it's in, it's in there for good, right? By the way, that's sarcasm if you haven't picked it up yet.
Well, I'm sure doubling hitpoints and damage is all that's needed to increase boss difficulty.
In that case I simply refer you to the post right above this one you made, you are honestly trying to throw gasoline on a match and claiming to be trying to put out a fire, whether the big issue in this post is the bug or the difficulty these are two of the easiest things to adjust for a competent dev house which to this point most couldn't say Bioware hasn't shown themselves to be whether you've enjoyed the games they made or not.
Another issue I have with your post is considering the groups playing, these are people who likely travelled hundreds if not thousands of miles for this and I would personally consider them hardcore and it really wouldn't surprise me that folks that dedicated to gaming would have an easier time dealing with the scenario than folks who most likely look at numbers all day.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
You know that coding doesn't just mean "doubling hitpoints" and the such, right? Have you ever seen coding before? Ever messed with programming? I mean, I'm not good at it, though I do know that Bioware can make a good difficulty. Look at Mass Effect's insanity difficulty.
That was nowhere even close to their highest level raid boss that was a basic breech droid.
Thats like saying someone easily beat a named gnoll in Blackburrow and because of that eq raiding was in trouble...well not quite but i guess you can fight hyperbole with hyperbole.
Not a fan of SW:TOR, but this is a non-issue. How is this not to be expected as normal devleopment?
Nothing to see here, move along.
It may well be just a isolated incident. Perhaps that one encounter wasn't properly balanced, or something along those lines. But it would make me awfully leery if I were hanging my hopes on the game. Given that the encounter was chosen to be demo-ed, I would have expected it to already be balanced. The fact that the developers completely misjudged its difficulty is troubling.
Again, it may only affect this one encounter. But it may also be indicative of underestimating the level of ability of their target playerbase, across the board. It's really impossible to say.
Luckily, it looks like BW is going to give themselves plenty of beta time to hammer this kind of stuff out, so there should definitely be room to tweak the challenge of the game. Of course, that's only if they acknowledge that a problem even exists in the first place. BW has shown that they can be pretty damn dismissive of user feedback lately.
I have no idea which encounter this is, that's being referred to, but the OP did say that the guys on the panel claimed the it was one of the hardest in the game and that the players were going to get demolished. That, of course, is hearsay, unless someone can corroborate it. On the other hand, I'm not prepared to call the OP a liar either so I'll take it at face value. Which then tells me that the panel had seriously misjudged the difficulty of the encounter.
It doesn't matter what happened in that encounter. What matters is that the the folks who were supposed to be the experts on it, really didn't understand how easily it could be beaten. *That's* the part that's troubling.
BTW, who were those guys on the panel anyway? Were they on the development team or a couple of marketing hacks? That might go a long way towards explaining their lack of understanding of the scenario they were demo-ing.
This is what testing is for. So they had a raid encounter that has to be tweaked, so what. When you really think about it, they probably wanted to see how regular players outside of testing were gonna handle that encounter. Instant feedback from non testers is a great asset in deciding how hard or easy to make that particular raid boss.
This is the process of fine tuning the game, so it will be enjoyable to the overall playerbase. Think about it this way. We all know that games gets tuned all the way through open beta, so this shouldn't be a big surprise to anyone.
Another blog posts, okay. Can i get proof of the validity of this one as well? cause this one is in the comments sections.
Really i hate taking blog posts as some kind of facts, really what happen to getting some kind facts before we go all nuts on it? While it is interesting again its a blog post. Besides that sounds like a beta issue.
We will have to see exactly what is going on in game. But i don't feel this is a big enough issue. Games have problems, that does not in anyway reflect the game. It's wether they fix the issue.
Zerm, i know that your interested in the game but you also know this particular link is connected to EALouse and you know that gets people riled up, so please can you link something that isn't that website? maybe a source we know as creditable, that can back up this claim?
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
What is wrong with some of you people? Seriously? The game isn't even in OPen Beta let alone near launch and stupid blog posts or opinions about the game right now are complete and utter BULL #$#$@#$@#@#$. Man, sometimes I wonder. It's bad enough I have to listen to liberal BS about real life issues, but now the same crap is starting to infiltrate my gaming space. It's like, people out there create drama over things that havent' even happened yet JUST to create drama.
I want off this rock! I thought I was crazy, but it seems the world has made a new definition for the word.
Hm, I think it isn't geniune for TOR. EVERY MMO developing company is too much locked in it's own circle. They test things they made themselves and ask family and friends and mostly like-minded non-critical people. It is something we have seen from virtually every MMO company that when game meets reality, developers are surprised. Nothing special or new here.
Tho I *do* think Mr. Erickson is indeed "mistaken about great many things", like how fast people will rush through the content. But thats just my gut feeling.
That is why people need vast worlds for the explorers, a complex crafting for the tinkerers and hobby systems for the playkids, so everyone is slowed down.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
The information you linked in your OP is from a demo at a games show. Yeah, there was a bug. That is expected when a game is still in early testing. Yeah, the encounter was not as difficult as they intended. That is also expected in early game testing. Balancing games is hard.
What I am wondering is what possible motivation someone like the OP has in posting this drivel and attempting to spin it as negatively as possible? Could it be that that he is yet another sandbox lover who can't accept even the possibility that this game will be good? He obviously can't give them the benefit of the doubt and clearly wants it to fail...
No I think Bioware has it right. There is a very good chance this game will be a huge success. I can tell you what would have failed for sure though. If they had designed the game as a sandbox like SWG, there is no chance in hell it would succeed because hardcore sandbox games are not popular. THAT game would have sucked for sure. The jury is still very much out on this one.
0/10
You fail at trolling, no one cares how faceroll an event demo is.
Im actually really enjoying the way Daniel Erickson is replying to questions. Especially when that guy asked about the tube/tunnel shooter. Classic.
Starting? When was the last time an upcoming game, especially a high profile one, wasn't either mercilless picked apart or embarrassingly fawned over, well before it's release?
Enhance your calm, John Spartan.
Gee, a rant from a soon to be fired pissed off employee and that's your "source"?! Dude...get a real review, not this crap. Nothing that douche-bag says can ever be taken as truth.
The game isn't balanced! There are bugs! The sky is falling! The game releases next week!
Oh, wait. Nevermind. Continue on with your day.
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
Enhance your calm, John Spartan.
True, I suppose it's all coming to a head with 3 Big games coming, GW2, Rift, and SWTOR and all I see are these assinine posts about games that aren't even in Open Beta yet and it just makes the vein in my temple expand a thousand fold.
...Calm...sandy beach...rolling waves...waterfalls....
there that's better. Sparta is quiet for the moment. ;D
I think you are trying to blow it out of proportion.